Page 76 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“You don’t need to,” Betsy murmured, nuzzling his cheek as his arms slid around her, in direct contradiction of his words. “I’ve decided to ruin myself.”

“Head of wax . . .” he murmured, his lips discovering a particularly tender spot along the side of her neck, as Betsy found herself suddenly a great deal more horizontal than she had been a moment before.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she gasped, and lost herself in the feeling of falling.

Chapter Nineteen

For a week now, the battle has continued. Not the battle for Santiago, but the battle for the lives of our men, here, in the hospital tents of Siboney. Away in the hills, our boys still gallantly guard their garrison beneath a flag of truce. Who knows what messages pass between the commanders, what demands and refusals? All we know is that here, beneath our canvas shelters, the struggle continues.

For twenty-four hours I have been on duty with the assistance of one orderly, tending to forty patients suffering variously from fever, measles, and dysentery as well as those wounds meted out by our foes. There are a remarkable number of head wounds, for which treatment with ice is crucial, but ice is scarce and hard to come by. Miss Barton has sent her ship, the State of Texas, to Kingston for urgently needed ice, but we can only pray it will return in time for these men, whose lives depend upon constant cool applications.

Never in my life have I felt so helpless. . . .

—Miss Katherine Carson for the St. Louis Star Ledger, July 8, 1898

* * *

Siboney, Cuba

July 9, 1898

“You should be sleeping.” Nurse Hayes set down her lantern by Holt’s bed.

Holt had come to like this quiet time when everyone else was snuffling and snoring around him. There was something comforting about watching Nurse Hayes on her rounds, her sure, decisive movements as she took temperatures, held glasses of water to parched lips, applied poultices, soothed away nightmares. In the day, her progress was marked by sometimes raucous commentary as the men vied for her attention. But in this last dark before the dawn, the tent was quiet except for the ever-present slapping of the waves against the shore, the labored breathing of the men, and the swish of Nurse Hayes’s skirt as she moved steadily from bed to bed, a small light in a great darkness.

Holt was always the last, the final stop before the light passed out of the tent. “Morning and night don’t seem to make much difference when you never get out of bed.”

“You mean, aside from that big glowing thing in the sky shining in your eyes?” Nurse Hayes felt his brow with the back of one hand. “No fever. I can tell you that even without the thermometer. I think you’re on the mend, Private Holt. You and that cot can part ways soon.”

“I don’t know. I’ve gotten kind of attached to it.” The strangest part was that Holt wasn’t entirely joking. How many days had it been? He’d lost all track of time. It felt like he’d been in this tent, in this cot at the end of the row, for something approaching an eternity. He’d been lying here watching the play of lantern light against the canvas while Noah hammered away at his ark; he’d lain here somewhere between sleep and waking while Drake routed the Armada; he’d followed the progress of Nurse Hayes on her rounds while empires rose and fell. Centuries had come and gone; the world outside was a vague, hypothetical thing. Anything might lie out there. He might wake, like Rip Van Winkle, to find himself in a world changed beyond understanding.

He wasn’t quite sure who he was anymore: not the new man he’d tried to be, but not the old one either, a kaleidoscope of fragments, shifting and whirling.

Nurse Hayes made a face at him. “You mean this cot’s gotten kind of attached to you. We’ll have to peel that mattress off you if you don’t get moving. We need to get you up and walking soon, putting some weight on that leg. I don’t know how you managed to walk as far as you did on it before.”

Holt mustered a weak grin. “Sheer cussedness, I imagine.”

Nurse Hayes looked at him sternly. “I would have said idiocy. Who spends a week tramping around on a leg with a hole in it?”

“It wasn’t a big hole.”

“Ha,” said Nurse Hayes. She paused, hesitating. “I never did say—it was a good thing you did, saving Paul. A foolhardy thing—but a good one.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Holt mumbled.

“No. They wouldn’t. So . . . thank you.”

She leaned forward just at the same moment that Holt turned his head to say something to her and her lips, which had been aiming for his cheek, brushed his lips instead. What happened next was just a reflex. Anyone would have done the same. Anyone encountering a soft pair of lips would have kissed them back. It was just human nature. Nothing conscious about it. For a whole few glorious seconds there was nothing in the world but the softness of her lips on his, flavored with the lingering taste of strong coffee.

And then the coffee was gone. The lips were gone. Nurse Hayes took a step back, her hand pressed against her mouth. In a muffled voice, she said, “You can’t kiss your nurse. It’s contrary to regulations. And if it isn’t, it should be!”

“You were the one who kissed me,” Holt protested, feeling his honor at stake, although if he had to stake his conscience on it, he wasn’t entirely sure he could swear he hadn’t. Kissed her that was. He would rather have liked to have gone on kissing her, and that was the most alarming bit of all, and not just for the coffee.

“I kissed your cheek.” Holt couldn’t be quite sure in the gloom, but he thought she was blushing.

Holt put his hand to his cheek. His very smooth cheek. He seized on the welcome distraction. “You shaved me!”

Nurse Hayes removed herself safely to the foot of the bed. “Days ago. You’ve only just noticed?”